WAR! - DM Comments - The Hide and Seek Mission March 12th

Hey, that was fun! What did you all think? Of the missions so far, this is the one I spent the LEAST amount of time prep'ing for. I want to know if it seemed like this adventure was more hastily put together than the others.

Okay, now for my comments...Yep, if the party had tried to crawl between the Strong Points, the chances were good (if Hayden lead the way) of not having any encounter. If there was an encounter, it would have been an easy EL5 with the possibility of an EL8 if the EL5 wasn't dealt with quickly and without an excessive amount of noise. As it turns out, the party decided to go the prior route which the Royalist knew the Rebels had used before. Thus SF Black ran into an EL6 ambush. I thought the party dispatched the bad guys fairly effectively here. Yeah, Ken was on the receiving end of some RED HOT dice rolling by the DM and Kara got blitzed and had to fall back. To balance out the DM's hot dice, Hunter was a damage dealing machine all during this battle.

I liked the little meeting engagement on the way to the ambush location. Hayden got himself into some serious trouble in this EL 10 matchup. Making the battle even more difficult was that there wasn't too much cover and 2/3rd of the enemy had superior mobility. The spearmen had some significant advantages if they stuck together but they made them ready targets for Kara's Blazing Starfalls. Cedarick fought a smart battle here and rallied the players to try to concentrate on one enemy at a time. Due to this being a running battle with attacks coming from all directions and every PC (except Cedarick) being engaged by adjacent enemies or the threat of Royalists charging and meleeing (horses cover alot of ground) the bad guys went down a whole lot slower this battle and it turned into a battle of attrition near the end. If would have been alot worse for the party if instead of four Swordsmen/Crossbowmen, I put in four Holy Archers (dazing/fire/poison/radiant damage) instead.

Once at the highway, the encounters were as follows; 1st 12 man squad led by a Master of Blades EL6; 2nd 14 man squad w 10 minions, 3 8th Level Swordsmen, and 1 Leader EL7; large 26 man platoon EL 10; 2nd 12 man squad that the party did attack - EL6 and the Paladin of Bane EL 10.

I thought the party finished off the enemy patrol with a fair amount of effectiveness; everything went about as well as it could have. Yeah, Cedarick and Kara each took a 22 hit point Crit, but whatcha gonna do about that?

Finally, I thought the plan at the end, to avoid the last fight was awesome. Yeah, even a young black dragon is a pretty fierce opponent. This was anywhere from an EL12 (with the dragon, horsemen and footmen) to an EL8 (just the footmen). So, three battles fought, four battles avoided, one situation resolved by clever planning, and one trap handled, nine encounters to the party's credit.

Again let me know how this adventure compared to the others and comment on how you thought the party worked together or could have done things better.

Instead of wearing plate armor I think my PC could have been wearing cloth and probably wouldn't have taken much more damage. The attacks against Kara were either really low misses or really high hits (mostly really high hits...)

The encounters themselves were fine, but did run a bit long. I did wish we had fought the last encounter, though I have a feeling we'll probrably see the dragon again...

I liked the adventure. The PC choices were more than "do you want to go left, right, or straight?", there were plenty of details to flesh out the world, but none that we were required to memorize, and the action was entertaining. Good adventure.

I had fun. Hunter did what Hunter does best in this mission, only occasionally foiled by some bad rolls. He seems to be getting quite a bit more fun to play as he gets more powers and feats available to him.